Show Time by Pym Avery

Show Time is a true story which found its roots in the answer to the question, 'how did the author get into tattooing', which she fielded from almost every person that she met. The book travels the backroads of Europe in the 1980s and 90s as a young woman chronicles her relentless determination to find scraps of information, loopholes and chinks in the armor of the male-dominated secretive world of tattooing where females were not welcome or encouraged. Eventually she makes her way to a place on the wild and colorful international rollercoaster that was the evolution of tattooing as an artform during that time and becomes one of Europe's trailblazing, award-winning female tattoo artists. The book follows the rise of the popularity of tattoo art during the 1990s and its transition from the shadows into the mainstream of modern culture pre internet and social media. Written for a wider audience, Show Time provides an inside look at the shadowy ways of the tattoo Old School and gives the reader an understanding of the process of tattooing from the professional side.

Pym Avery is a professional, multi-award-winning tattoo artist. She began to teach herself the trade in 1987 at a time when not many tattooers would entertain women as apprentices in this heavily male dominated world. Consequently, she traveled throughout Europe in a mobile tattoo studio set up in her van to acquire enough tattooing experience and skill to convince a tattoo shop to hire her. Her quest took her into the tattoo convention scene of the 1990s, the decade when tattooing as an art form exploded into the public consciousness and opened her first tattoo shop in 1995. Pym still does tattoos and travels the world. She also does commission art, writes books and owns a sailboat in Mexico.